Blog
Equality in words and actions
Our CEO reflects on a comment from one of Choice Support's Trustees. Sarah says, "The truth is that none of us can do what we do without each other and so we need to remember that we are colleagues with equal importance and standing."
I was in a meeting last week with one of our Trustees and he said something that really made me stop and think. What he said was, “there are no junior members of staff, just colleagues.” I quickly took a note of this and have been pondering on it ever since.
In society there is so much talk about parity, the state of being equal. Equality in relation to pay, parity of esteem, valuing mental health equally with physical health and parity in relation to diversity and inclusion in our workplaces and our communities.
Being equal reminded me of the famous quote from George Orwell’s novel, Animal Farm, and the quote goes, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” The sentence is a comment on the hypocrisy of leaders, of governments and institutions that state absolute equality for their people but give power and privilege to a small elite.
In social care we talk a lot about the importance of our staff, how important their role is, we couldn’t do what we do without them and then we negate their importance by referring to them as junior. This seemingly small comment by one of our Trustees has been a reminder to me about the importance of words. The truth is that none of us can do what we do without each other and so we need to remember that we are colleagues with equal importance and standing.
See you soon, bye.